GREAT BARRINGTON — Get ready to take opera, very nearly, from the top. “Alcina,” which the Boston Early Music Festival will bring to the Mahaiwe Performing Arts Center beginning June 23, comes from an ...

Francesca Caccini—a virtuoso singer, court composer, and music teacher in the employ of the Medicis—was caught up in the invention of opera as an art form in the early seventeenth century. She likely ...

Francesca Caccini was the daughter of Giulio Caccini, a composer and singer in Florence around 1600, well-known to music students, at least by name, as the author of one of the earliest operas ...